Pawn

Pawn calculates scores for items to help you easily find upgrades for your gear. It's completely customizable, and applicable to any class and situation: for example, it can help you decide whether to equip the ring with a higher item level but one stat you don't want (say, strength for shamans), or the ring with the lower item level but all good stats. It's that level of customization that makes it very different from more general mods like GearScore and more specialized mods like TankPoints.

Pawn can be used by new players right off the bat without needing to change any options, or by advanced players who plan out their gear upgrades, build Excel spreadsheets, install Rawr, and read Elitist Jerks.

Language support

Pawn works with English, French, German, Portuguese, Russian, and Simplified Chinese, and includes an untested translation into Traditional Chinese. Unlike most addons, it's NOT possible to use the English version on a language that it doesn't support. (If you're interested in helping translate Pawn into other languages, let me know!)

Staying in touch

For fastest assistance with Pawn, leave a comment here or check the official thread at Curse. You can also become a fan of Vger on Facebook and get updates of new versions and stuff like that. You can also leave questions or comments there if you don't have an account on this site.

Getting started

Pawn will automatically set itself up to work with your characters, but there's a lot that you can do to customize it. See the readme file included with Pawn for more information on getting the most out of Pawn.

Version 2.1.9

Performance enhancements based on suggestions from rowaasr13 of Garrison Mission Manager.
Pawn's Bag Upgrade Advisor will no longer show green arrows on items in your bags that aren't equippable yet because you don't meet the level requirement. (You'll still see them if you hover over the item.)
Added support for the comparison tooltips that appear when holding Shift over the point-of-interest icon for a world quest that rewards an equippable item.
The "compare item left" and "compare item right" keybinds now work on world quest rewards.

Fixed a mistake I introduced in version 2.1.6 that caused characters to become undying servants of the Lich King if they use Automatic mode (the default), which caused Pawn to not show anything on tooltips, and make it appear as if Pawn thought that your spec was Blood in the Pawn window.

Version 2.1.6

Improved performance in raid groups.

Version 2.1.5

Increased Pawn's memory usage in exchange for faster item scans. (Memory usage should still only be a couple MB, but finding bag upgrades should be much faster.)
Minor translation updates.

Version 2.1.4

Fixed a bug where occasionally Pawn would complain about finding too many "bonus IDs" on items.
Removed the "ignore valor and baleful upgrades" feature, since those items are not relevant anymore.

Version 2.1.3

Updated translations.

Version 2.1.2

The Compare tab will no longer show the differential between the sockets and socket value on the left item versus the right item. (For example, if one item has no socket, and the other has a socket worth 1,250 points, it will no longer show "+1,250".) After this change, the green and red numbers shown will always only be stats, which should make them easier for new people to understand.
Fixed a bug where it was no longer possible to export some scales (generally, scales that were created using the "empty" button or importing, rather than copying an existing scale or starting from a template).

Version 2.1.1

Pawn will now take over the new WoW 7.1 feature that puts green arrows on items in your bags. Normally the feature shows you items that are a higher item level than what you have equipped. Pawn will change the feature so that it shows items that are an upgrade to your currently-equipped gear for any of your active scales. (For example, if you're in the default Automatic mode, it'll put upgrade arrows next to items that are better for your current spec, but not for other specs.)
This feature has no effect on the WoW 7.0 live realms.
If you don't like this, and would rather go back to the old behavior, uncheck "Show bag upgrade advisor" on Pawn's Options tab.

Developer features

These features are primarily useful for people developing guides and simulators.

Pawn scale tags, used with the Import and Export feature on the Scale tab, can now specify a class and spec, such as "Class=Mage, Spec=1".
The spec number in the scale tag is the order in which it displays in the UI. (That spec number is also used internally by the game in a variety of situations.) For example, the specs appear as Arcane, Fire, Frost in the Mage UI, so Arcane is 1, Fire is 2, and Frost is 3.
When class and spec are included in a scale tag, Pawn will automatically add the appropriate list of unusable item types to the scale without having to painstakingly list them all out in the scale tag (IsPolearm = -10000000, etc.).
When scales that have a class and spec associated with them are exported, the resulting scale tag will be smaller than in previous versions. Importing those scales into old versions of Pawn will mostly work okay, but old versions of Pawn will ignore Class and Spec, so there will be subtle differences.

Version 2.1

Pawn's default stat weights now come from Ask Mr. Robot! The existing Wowhead placeholder scales have been removed, and the Ask Mr. Robot scales work automatically in the same was as the previous placeholders, but now have more appropriate and helpful advice for each specialization.
If you'd like advice for more than one spec at once, switch to Manual mode on the Scales tab, and then you can show and hide additional scales from there.
You may notice that items in your bags or bank that weren't upgrades before version 2.1 are now showing up as upgrades葉hat's to be expected, as some of the new stat weights in this version are vastly different than before.
In the English version, the Values tab has been renamed to Weights, to better match the generally accepted terminology.
The item level display on the Compare tab will no longer show the difference between the two levels ("+15" etc.). I'm hoping that this makes it clearer that the item level isn't used in calculations.
Pawn will no longer add orange diamonds to special effects that it doesn't understand on items. I felt that in modern versions of Pawn, those were just clutter, and didn't really provide useful information.

Thanks for the feedback; detailed comments like yours are really helpful. My intent is indeed to remove that option+feature again when Legion launches. Think of the feature like this:

Checked (default): Compare your items as they are, and assume that you'll fully upgrade few or none of your items
Unchecked: Compare your items assuming that you will fully max out everything you get

When the option is turned off, that's designed as the more "hardcore" experience葉he comparisons aren't valid if you're not going to farm up the Apexis shards and Valor to max out every item that you find. Do you feel that describes your playstyle? Upgraded and baleful items will still get compared as they are, in a normal and predictable way, with the option checked葉he thing you'd lose out without the option to turn it off is that assumption that you'll fully max out every item. And I think that's only really valuable if you're stuck at level 100 and doing the Draenor raids repeatedly, which doesn't sound like you.

I did remove green, orange, and purple gems from the Gems tab for a few reasons: (1) a gem of those colors can only, at best, tie a red, green, or blue gem; (2) in Pawn 2.0 I did a lot of work to simplify Pawn for everyone at every level, and especially right now when secondary stats are weighted equally, having two-color gems in the UI made things overwhelming now that all sockets are prismatic, and (3) it's extremely time-consuming maintaining a large database of gems each expansion, and removing those saved me a ton of time.

For the record, I do enjoy leveling as well, and I only have one character (Vger, naturally) who I do anything with at max level. I definitely do intend Pawn to be useful at lower levels as well as the latest content.

By popular demand, the Ignore Valor and Baleful Upgrades option has returned. It's on by default, but you can turn it off to better compare new gear.
I'll wait to remove this option until Legion actually launches.

Will Valor and Baleful upgrades go away when Legion launches?

I don't mean to sound rude, or angry, truly. I've mentioned before that I use your addon and find it valuable for *all* my toons, most of which are not at max level. You seem to be removing comparison options that are still valuable at lower levels, from color gem options (unless I misunderstood that) to this latest.

If your intention for this addon is to focus mostly/solely on max level content, please indicate that somehow. In which case I'd look for some other addon to help with choosing gear on my lower level toons. If your intention is for this to be more broadly useful across the spectrum of leveling up, please consider keeping these options available. I imagine that I'm not the only person who does *not* consider 'leveling' to be a race to the top, with every item under max level to be useless and completely disposable and unworthy of maxing out for any reason.
I actually find max content to be irritating, so far. Tho I admit, this is the first time I've *had* toons at max level.

Regardless, thank you for your work with the addon. I have found it incredibly useful so far.
-Barleduq

Sure; I'll keep it around if it looks like it'll still be useful for low-level casters. I turned it off by default because it confuses a lot of people, but removing it entirely probably won't save much further time or complexity right now.

Removing the option to have Pawn track both DW and 2H weapon upgrades. My understanding is that in Legion, there won't be any specs that are designed to work with both options except casters, and that's only through level 100. I believe we're getting our artifact weapons right at the beginning of Legion葉here won't be any further weapon drops or quest rewards once you leave Draenor.

I don't know if it's possible, but keeping some of these options around would be welcome, since I have alts I'm leveling, and I use this to decide on rewards and such.

Removing the option to have Pawn track both DW and 2H weapon upgrades. My understanding is that in Legion, there won't be any specs that are designed to work with both options except casters, and that's only through level 100. I believe we're getting our artifact weapons right at the beginning of Legion葉here won't be any further weapon drops or quest rewards once you leave Draenor.

You're probably not doing anything wrong. You can put the new 2H weapon into the Compare tab of Pawn's UI to see what Pawn thinks it's an upgrade of. My guess is that it doesn't know about any past 2H weapons you've held幼licking that reset button isn't the only thing that requires Pawn to recalculate things... updates to Pawn, vendoring an item that used to be one of your best, changing scale values, and a variety of other things can cause Pawn to lose information about past items.

Making sure that your best two-handed weapon is in an equipment set can help. Beyond that, there probably isn't much I can suggest. I will probably be removing that option in the next major version of Pawn since it won't be relevant anymore when Legion hits (since everyone will be using their artifacts).

Sorry!

Hmm. Removing which option? And I haven't been following the buzz about Legion that hard, but will people have artifacts from the very beginning? I had thought (perhaps wrongly) that it was something we had to work up to.

You're probably not doing anything wrong. You can put the new 2H weapon into the Compare tab of Pawn's UI to see what Pawn thinks it's an upgrade of. My guess is that it doesn't know about any past 2H weapons you've held幼licking that reset button isn't the only thing that requires Pawn to recalculate things... updates to Pawn, vendoring an item that used to be one of your best, changing scale values, and a variety of other things can cause Pawn to lose information about past items.

Making sure that your best two-handed weapon is in an equipment set can help. Beyond that, there probably isn't much I can suggest. I will probably be removing that option in the next major version of Pawn since it won't be relevant anymore when Legion hits (since everyone will be using their artifacts).

I got a low-level item in the salvage yard, and noticed that it claimed to be an upgrade. Now, it's a 2 handed weapon, and I'm currently wielding 2 one handers, but I've wielded better 2 handers since the last time I tried to reset the values. Here are two screenshots, one showing the upgrade (and what I'm currently using) and one showing my settings.

Hi! In the current versions, Pawn will assume that you're going to upgrade any Baleful gear you get using Empowered Apexis Fragments to turn it to level 695, so it always compares with that version in mind. (Similarly, it assumes that you'll either upgrade new items with Valor.) If you don't want Pawn to assume that you'll upgrade items, you can check the "ignore Valor and Baleful upgrades" option on the Options tab, and then it will behave like previous versions.

I've switched back to 1.9.20 (my previous downloaded version) instead of the current 1.9.24.

I'm an Unholy Death Knight with standard settings. I couldn't understand why Pawn wasn't showing the purple lvl 665 Felbane Greaves of the Peerless as an upgrade for equipped blue ilvl 650 Felbane Greaves of the Merciless. Using the Compare tab on my two items showed me why (?): Pawn 1.9.24 seems to be using the values for a purple version of the blue boots too. Going back to 1.9.20 fixed the issue.

PS Thank you for this add-on. It takes the brain worry out of comparing gear

Thanks! That did it. I needed to add the same hack to SetQuestLogItem, but now things seem to be working correctly. Much appreciated! (Also, much appreciated for your work in pioneering compact raid frames. )

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